


Being an Account of De Fei, mother and empress

by ofsevenseas



Category: Bu Bu Jing Xin, Chinese History RPF
Genre: A bit of cdrama and a bit of reality, Crossover, Gen, Historical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-07-18
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofsevenseas/pseuds/ofsevenseas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is born a daughter of the Uya clan, beautiful and quick-witted, sloe-eyed and slender-tall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being an Account of De Fei, mother and empress

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone who knows a little bit about the Qing dynasty will remember the succession dispute between the Fourth Imperial Prince, Yinzhen, and Fourteenth Imperial Prince, Yinti. Supposedly the will could have been modified from 十四 (14) to 于四 (to 4), but this is significantly harder in Manchurian and Mongolian, and the imperial will was written in all three languages. So I'm departing from the position that Yongzheng was the rightful successor here (so did the show, lbr).
> 
> The chronology is working from what I can find of historical records on the Empress Xiaogongren.

She is born a daughter of the Uya clan, beautiful and quick-witted, sloe-eyed and slender-tall.

That is how it is written, anyway, and she does not mind Yinzhen conflating his own origins in order to cement his own legitimacy. It is the least of what he has done.

The truth is, she is only a domestic slave, a water-bearer, a tea maiden, a young girl of fifteen who caught the emperor’s roving eye. She used that fact as protection, a shield against the inevitable intrigues of an entire palace under the governance of one supreme power. A mere servant girl, living quietly without any factions to support her, with some beauty, aye, but the kind that will fade with age.

The emperor forgets her for three years, but then he gives her a son only to take him away. She understands that she has not status to claim an imperial prince, and gives him to the nurses, wrapped in silk swaddling clothes, quiescent even at less than a year’s age.

She sees him, sometimes, reading in the palace gardens.

The title comes after. The other wives come to visit her in her new rooms, speculation clinging to the air with their perfumes, and she is twenty.

She does not seek to hurt others, but remains alert - this is the palace, and nothing is ever simple, but for a while, things are easy.

The emperor gives her a son and three daughters, and heaven takes them all away, one way or another, and she learns that imperial children are no more lucky than common ones, her girls and shining boy all gone away.

Reading people comes easily, acting on that becomes easy, and the emperor, for all that he is a great ruler and the son of heaven, is no different. She is not stupid, she would not try to control him, and she has known the lesson of boundaries since she was a child.

Thus far, and no further.

At twenty-nine, she feels like a motherly hen, brooding over her nest of overly-excitable imperial wives. Perhaps Yinti is all the more precious because she was not expecting him. Her darling little boy grows up quickly, strong, precocious, and compassionate. She teaches him to run in the palace gardens without falling, to write his first letters, to learn patience and practise it.

His first words are to her ears, and to her mind, his face is clear like the early morning sky.

Her elder son, grown up these past years, comes to visit, but he is not hers, not after the empress took him, and especially not after the empress’s death.

He is not hers, because she cannot know him.

Yinti grows up, and makes her proud. Becomes a general, and conquers cities. Follows the wrong prince, and loses his rightful place as the best of them all. Perhaps he was not meant to be emperor, and perhaps he was, but he will always be hers.

And even when she is dying, she knows in her own heart that she has only one son.

**Author's Note:**

> So I finished Bubujingxin for the second time this week, and once again had feelings. In actual history, Yongzheng did not get along with his birth mother, due to a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that he was taken away to be raised by Lady Tunggiya, who eventually became Kangxi's third empress. Neither one was altogether blameless, but the rift was so severe that she refused to accept him as the successor, and then died shortly afterwards.
> 
> I took issue with such crappy motherhood (though Kangxi was a terrible picker of crown princes, yea verily) and this came out. Kind of excuses her, except not really.


End file.
